


What Do I Do?

by nightofdean



Series: A War Story (Non Redacted Version) [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Gore, If You Squint - Freeform, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1868889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightofdean/pseuds/nightofdean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” - Tim O’Brien</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Do I Do?

The press had a certain tenacity when it came to Steve Rogers, ‘man out of time’, ‘oh, he’s from the 40’s’, ‘I wonder what war stories he can tell?’. Journalists constantly asked him to tell war stories, ‘for the kids’, that was after they asked him about Avenging, his workout routine, and basically every other mundane detail of his life. It was like they thought asking simple questions would help out, not really. In fact stupid daily minutiae questions were better.

How was he supposed to tell the world (because it was the world) about Junior Juniper, about begging the Military for a medic, and then having to dig a bullet out of Izzy’s leg with his bare hands.

How was he supposed to explain the stretches of silence in the woods, as they waited on the frontlines, for the all clear to move. The pressing silence, ensconced the Howling Commandos sucking even the slightest noise from their eardrums. It crushed them from inside out, whispering silently in their ears. Mocking them with imaginary sounds.

Steve sat in his foxhole, lost in thought (the thoughts lost now, after so long) as he examined his dirty fingernails, probably thinking that perhaps his nails had never actually been clean and the dirt was not actually dirt. Something else.

“Hey, got room for two,” it was Bucky, Steve could hear the smirk in his voice, even now. He was probably the only one still capable of a smirk, at least one that wasn’t filled with wariness.

Steve shrugged, he didn’t mind. Anything to get his mind off the ‘dirt’, that’s what it was just dirt.

Bucky slid into the small foxhole (it was meant for one, Steve dug it himself). Bucky’s knee bumped Steve’s, he didn’t even notice.

“How’s the team?” said Steve mechanically, it was all he could manage at the moment.

“Fine, foxholes are dug. Jones finally contacted camp, we’ll meet with the medic next checkpoint.” reported Bucky, professional and to the point.

“And Cohen?” This was the answer he desperately wanted and didn’t want at the same time. Was he going to camp to deliver a body or have an injured man treated.

“Inconclusive, it’s touch and go.” A soldier does not presume to know things. He does not presume to know the truth before it has been revealed. Bucky merely states what is fact. He doesn’t know.

It still frightens him. He can still feel the overwhelming weight of Cohen’s life wrapped across his shoulders, his chest, his back. Steve can already hear the typewriter keys typing out the telegram that’ll inevitably be sent to Cohen’s relatives. Steve will have to write the letter as he is his C.O.

Dear Mrs. Cohen, your son Isadora Cohen is (was) a good man, exemplary, the smartest man -

Steve stops there, no, keep it impersonal. Reminding Cohen’s mother how wonderful and full of life her son is (was?) wouldn’t help (nothing would). So, Steve revises, impersonal. Succinct.

_I’m sorry to inform you of your loss._

Like the letters Steve used to dread he’d receive one day informing him of Bucky’s _heroic tragic death_. He’d gotten two of those already. Death In Action: Father and Mother. Although they phrased it differently when he got the second letter.

It never stopped hurting.

He made sure that Cohen’s worth was known to his mother, he mentally notes.

Bucky shifts at Steve’s side, realigning his back against the dirt wall of the foxhole, and spreading his knees to make room for his rifle between them. Bucky slouches, almost becoming one with the dirt floor. Bucky holds his rifle lightly as he tips his head to Steve, a knowing look on his face.

“Rest up Steve. Captain America needs sleep too.” murmured Bucky, as he knocked his helmet over his eyes, lips slightly upturned beneath the shadow of his helmet.

He didn’t say it, but then again he didn’t have to. Steve knew Bucky too well.

_There’s nothing more we can do._

That’s what he was saying, stop worrying yourself into an early grave and rest. The men will need you more than ever in the morning, especially Cohen. Stay strong.

Sometimes Steve wished he could just shrug the death and decay off, forget about it, and move on. Sometimes it wasn’t so easy as that, the death, decay, and rotting fungus clung on, left invisible bruises and red welted nail marks across his skin. The evidence always remained, never receding, time diminished the memory, but never the sensation, the knowledge of what had happened.

What had happened was simple, cut and dry. It was an abandoned German trench, He, Manelli, and Cohen had jumped in taking momentary cover. The trench wasn’t so empty after all.

“Fuck,” Manelli growled before rifle shots were fired.

Three rounds were fired before the German was killed. Manelli missed, the German shot back, Cohen fell clutching his leg, Steve saw no way out. He fired, the German fell silently.

“Fuck, fucking kraut shot me,” Cohen roared from the ground, clutching his leg.

Quickly Steve rushed in, ripping Cohen’s pants leg open where the bullet had entered, it was bleeding profusely. Steve’s hands were applying pressure before he knew it, hands painted crimson, blood flowing like water.

“Augh! Do something, fuck, oh god, oh god, I don’t want -”

“Izzy, shut the fuck up, you want more of them to come running,” Manelli gritted out, sitting down legs spread Cohen’s head resting on his thigh, already prepared for the worst.

Cohen swallowed deeply, but tried to yank away when Steve applied more pressure. “Jesus,” Manelli said, as he saw the gushing river of blood Steve was trying to staunch.

Steve suddenly grabbed Cohen’s hand making him apply pressure to his wound. Manelli spoke up, livid. “What the hell, Captain?”

“His wound needs a tourniquet if he doesn’t get one he’ll bleed out, the bullet needs to come out too and fast.” Steve spoke quickly as he searched for a tourniquet eventually finding a washcloth large enough to wrap tightly above the leg wound.

“Cap, I’m going to die aren’t I?” Cohen breathed out, he was sitting up now, hand covered in crimson now.

Steve’s expression shifted slightly from battlefield adrenaline to battlefield compassion. “No, no Cohen, you’re not going to die.”

“Now this, is going to hurt, bite your cheek,” said Steve, looking into Cohen’s eyes for a moment. Then he wrapped the cloth thrice over Cohen’s leg nearly stopping the blood flow. Cohen’s body shook from the impulse to struggle, his lip quivered before it was released, revealing a droplet of blood.

 Without tools Steve had to use his fingers, digging them into skin, muscle, fat, scraping bone. Everything slid past his fingers, slippery wet, like living slime. The tip of his finger finally hit something smooth yet undeniably metallic, a bullet. Except it wasn’t whole it had broken apart.

There was no time to search for each piece. Steve pinched the bullet fragment, no doubt the biggest and most dangerous and with another smaller cloth wrapped Cohen’s wound as best he could.

Now several hours later in his foxhole Steve regrets his promise to Cohen. He presumed to know the fate of his soldier and made a promise he couldn’t keep.

Steve remembers a slow day months after that particular incident, Cohen’s laid up in London on medical leave. The Commandos take the time for R&R as well, get their bearings, re-supply, freshen up.

Steve can with almost perfect clarity remember the sky, soft peach turning into burnt orange, then fading into a light purple. It was calming. He remembers standing there for hours, mesmerized, drinking it in. There weren’t many opportunities to appreciate the sky on the frontlines.

“Beautiful, don’t see that often nowadays,” it was Bucky, standing at Steve’s left, a beat of silence and Bucky held out a cigarette. Steve finally noticed Bucky’s own cigarette held messily between his fingers. “Come on man, you know I can’t smoke alone.”

A poor excuse. Steve had seen Bucky smoke on the outside of camp perimeter before. Steve took the cigarette anyway, the tobacco did nothing for him, he just couldn’t let his friend burn alone.

Since Cohen’s accident they’ve seen so many other’s die, even new recruits and replacements. Steve had a total of eighteen letters to write, his hand slipped into his pocket, cool metal touched his skin he could hear the faint clink of death.

“How do I do it?” The words tumbled out in a single desperate breath.

“Same as you always do, tell their moms they died heroically in the line of duty.” stated Bucky simply. From the corner of Steve’s eye Bucky tapped the cigarette, ash floated downward.

“You still believe that?” And now Steve knows why Bucky dropped his cigarette not even a fag yet.

Bucky gave the sky above them a considering look, several beats of silence followed. “Yeah, yeah I do.”

Steve understands now, or did then, he had just been blinded by the pool of blood he’d been drowning in.  

 

 


End file.
